


Such Liberty

by ishafel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik finds answers to questions he never meant to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such Liberty

The gates are vast, iron, impossibly rusted and heavy, and they bear the legend “For the Greater Good” in an ornate script. At the slightest touch they fall open, as if they have been waiting for him. They are very like another set of gates he saw once, and yet Erik Lensherr does not hesitate, walking through. Nurmengard Prison is not strong enough to hold him, not when the very walls are made of metal.

He has a bar of German gold with him, because he is not sure what sort of currency these people use but gold has never failed him. The guard takes it eagerly enough, tracing the broken cross and the eagle with curious fingers. What Erik has been told is true: though this place stands within German borders, it had no part in German wars.

His gold buys him safe passage in Nurmengard, and half an hour alone with its most infamous prisoner. Anything else he must contrive on his own. But there is iron and steel everywhere: in the bars of the cells, in the grates on the floors, in the brackets where torches burn. This is no Auschwitz, no Bergen-Belsen. The man who built Nurmengard-- the man whom it now cages-- built it to last a thousand years, to outlast a hundred Reichs.

He is trembling by the time he reaches Gellert Grindelwald's cell. He has been waiting for this for a very long time, has been hunting men like this as much as he has been hunting SS and Gestapo. They say Grindelwald can read minds, and change them, can tell the future from the stars, start a fire burning and a storm to quench it with a wave of his hand. It is not very likely, but it is possible, and Erik is tired of being the only one.

Grindelwald is an old man who was handsome once, with kind, tired eyes and a tangled beard. “Who are you, boy?” he asks, when Erik does not speak.

Erik has not been a boy in a very long time, not since the day he watched a different set of iron gates close. But the knowledge in Grindelwald's eyes frightens him. “My name is Lensherr,” he says, and the bars of Grindelwald's cage begin to bend outward.

The old man touches them, interested but unafraid. His fingers-- Erik shudders. His fingers are twisted ruins, broken and badly set and swollen with arthritis.

“My people use wands to channel our power,” Grindelwald says. “They thought that if I could not hold a wand, they would have no need to fear me. It was forty years ago. I taught them differently.”

It is not something Schmitt did-- he wanted Erik whole, strong. But the casual cruelty in it makes Erik remember Schmitt, and he thinks for a moment that he is going to be sick. He closes his eyes and lets the iron around him, the steel beneath him, smooth the edges of his panic away. Ten years ago in Auschwitz he could not have done this; five years ago, even. He has come so far since then. Too far, maybe.

When he opens his eyes again, Grindelwald is watching. “You are not one of us,” he says, “but you are not one of them, either. What did they do to you, little smith, when they saw that you were different?”

Erik shakes his head. “Nothing permanent.”

“All wars are ugly, but some are uglier than others,” and Erik knows Grindelwald is reading his mind. “Still-- they are always cruel, humans, to those they fear. Wizards are no better.” He flexes his hand; the stiff fingers do not move.

But Erik did not come here for philosophy, for lectures on human nature. He knows the story of Grindelwald's war, and he knows that the Greater Good had nothing to do with it. “Are there others like me?”, he asks. He had not believed that Grindelwald was what they said he was. He believes it now. He believed as soon as he saw those ancient, knowing eyes.

“Oh, liebling,” Grindelwald says, “there will never be another such as you. The fire you were forged in has burned out. But there are others, yes, others that are not ordinary and are not wizards, but are something else entirely, born of the revolution, children of science. But you will have to find them, and recognize them, and it will not always be easy.”

“Those are platitudes. I want the truth.”

“The truth.” Grindelwald smiles, and Erik flinches. “My talents are not for prophesying. The truths I tell, I make true: I am the greatest wizard of my generation and I do not need a wand to force my power. You will find the things you hunt and you will destroy them, and by the destroying you will become them. As you love, so will you hate and as you are loved so will you be hated. You will burn the world to save the world and no one will thank you at the end. Be happy, Erik Lensherr, be happy while you can because nothing lasts. You will end as I will, as all great men do, alone and broken.”

Before he came here, he wanted so badly for Grindelwald to be a freak, to be wrong in the way Erik is wrong. But whatever it is that makes Grindelwald wrong, it is to do with what he believes, and not what he is. He is not human, but none of the people here are, and there is no wrongness to it. The thing that makes him a monster is subtler than that.

His words make Erik think of another cell, another prison, and for the first time in a long time he feels unclean. “It is enough,” he says, “to know that there are others out there. To know that I will save them.”

Grindelwald is not smiling now. “It was enough for me,” he says, “to know that what I did changed the course of the world. Your time is up, liebling. Get out of Nurmengard.”


End file.
